Average council tax bills up more than £100

THE average council tax bill in Bristol will rise by more than £100, after Bristol City Council finalised its budget for the coming year.

Councillors also confirmed pay-and-display charges for 10 city car parks that are currently free, including Beechwood Road and Stoke View Road in Fishponds.

And garden bin collections are set to go up from £32 to £50 a year, with new charges for replacing black bins, garden waste bins and recycling containers, and taking DIY waste to recycling centres.

Councillors voted to raise the council tax by 4.99%, the maximum amount possible without calling a referendum, adding an extra £94.87 to the median Band D bill.

Final bills also include charges for the region's police and fire services.

The Avon & Somerset police precept for Band D taxpayers is rising by £15 (just under 6%), from £251.20 to £266.20, and the Avon Fire Authority charge will rise by £5 (6.4%) in Band D, from £77.95 to £82.95.

When the police and fire charges are added to the council tax, the total bill is up by 5.15%£114.87 in Band D.

When new car park charges were revealed last month, there were warnings that they would affect GP patients, shoppers and charity volunteers who use the Beechwood Road car park, next to Fishponds Health Centre.

Both Beechwood Road and, and Stoke View Road, which is off Fishponds Road near the McDonald's drive-thru and Faizan-E-Madina mosque, will have daytime charges of £1 per hour seven days a week from the autumn.

Amendments by the council's Conservative group to abandon the parking and waste charges failed at the budget meeting on February 21.

But four changes to Labour mayor Marvin Rees’s spending plans put forward by other opposition groups were approved.

Green amendments to develop plans for a 'liveable neighbourhood' scheme in South Bristol and allocate £4million of unspent developer contributions for improvements to parks and streets were agreed.

A Lib Dem request to cut a fund for legal defences of special educational needs and disabilities tribunals and use the money to employ more caseworkers to resolve disputes and speed up children's assessments was also passed, along with a Knowle Community Party move to ensure funding for improvements in Redcatch Park.

At the end of a five-and-ahalf-hour meeting only Labour voted to pass the budget. The Greens - who have the most members in the chamber - and Lib Dems abstained, while the Tories and KCP voted against.

Former Green group leader Heather Mack said: “This budget is flawed, full of unrealistic savings, and it’s a result of not just inadequate funding from the Tory government but also the costly mistakes of this [Labour] administration – Bristol Energy and the Beacon to name a few."

Tory group leader Mark Weston said the new parking charges would be "catastrophic to communities" and the recycling and DIY waste charges would lead to fly-tipping.

The Lib Dems had also called for waste charges to be scrapped.

Mayor Marvin Rees said the budget was a “considerable achievement” and contained "plenty of hope for the future".

He said: “We’ve protected libraries, children’s centres and parks. We’re supporting vulnerable people by safeguarding our council tax reduction scheme and local crisis prevention fund for the life of this administration."

Meeting report by Adam Postans, Local Democracy Reporting Service

A DECISION to axe the only bus serving Fishponds' Oldbury Court estate has been condemned as "appalling" by residents and councillors.

Operator First West of England only introduced the 47 in October last year, as a "partial replacement" for the 5, which also served parts of Eastville and Stapleton, and several other services it had decided to cut.

But the company has now announced that the 47 will itself be axed in its latest timetable changes, which will come into force on April 2.

The changes will see more buses introduced on the 48, 48a and 49 routes, which travel on Fishponds Road between the city centre, Emersons Green, Downend and UWE's Frenchay Campus, with First promising a bus every seven to eight minutes between Fishponds and the centre.

Every other 48 will terminate in Downend and every other 49 in Staple Hill, with half of the services going on to Emersons Green.

Some evening services on the